Coffee is the Bees Knees. I'm Following it Seed to Cup.

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Part 1. Life Monteverde and Community

I am just going to write a few parts about how things are done at Life Monteverde through community their involvement in the community, land use practices and education. Get ready to be very, very interested!

Community.

Everyone is connected to coffee here. You meet a person and they will tell you that their grandmother had coffee on the farm and they always were out picking as a child. There are a few people in town who are baristas and bringing in new coffees from all over the world. Life Monteverde is connected with these baristas and virtually every other producer in the area.

The farm is a part of a cooperative that connects many farmers in the area to producing equipment and to the international market. The cooperative previously was certified as Fair Trade, but ran into an interesting problem. Individual farmers got the taste of trading directly with importers from around the world. It seemed like an easy choice, partake in the cooperative by paying dues, attending meetings and all the other business logistics involved in cooperatives or… break off and trade directly.

Many farmers began to do this and the cooperative began to lose strength. Many of the farmers that decided to leave the cooperative did not realize that cooperatives in the long term have their advantages and that it is very difficult to accept market shocks when you are alone.

Life Monteverde is in the process of working with other members of the cooperative to strengthen their network. This means strengthening the quality of their coffee, maintaining their transparency of trade and land use practices, along with closing energy loops at the farm.

It feels wonderful to be a part of a farm that is well respected in town. As I said everyone knows someone in coffee and everyone knows Guillermo and Life Monteverde.

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One response to “Part 1. Life Monteverde and Community”

So is it possible for those farmers who backed out of the cooperative to become a part of it again? That area sounds really interesting. It has to be amazing to see a community that is all based around one product. We have a million and ten things here which drive people. Do you think it makes them seem like a stronger community because they all have the coffee in common, or does it seem similar to other communities you’ve seen where coffee isn’t the common product?